Sunday, May 28, 2017

Due to the “VUCA” nature of digitalization, the business complexity is unavoidable. Organizations that are skilled at managing complexity can gain advantages by pushing the boundaries of a more complicated business mix that provides opportunities to create inter-business value. From an organizational structure perspective, how to fine tune thedigital dimensions of your organizational structure development to get digital ready?

The goal of digital organizational structure tuning is to strike the delicate balance between solid and flow: Compared to the traditional organization as the mechanical system to keep spinning, digital organizations today are more like the organic living system which keeps growing. The goal of digital organizational structure tuning is to strike the delicate balance between solid and flow: It needs to be solid enough to “keep things in order,” but also fluid enough to interact with the expanded digital ecosystem seamlessly, to keep things flowing with responsiveness, changeability, and agility of the organization. It is about developing the hybrid organizational structure which well blends structured and unstructured processes to run with adjusted speed, and to leverage the multifaceted performance measurement for assessing and improving organizational maturity. Limited hierarchy works best in a creative environment where the free flow of ideas and their prompt implementation is a key element of success. There are many factors that influence and have an impact on the digital ready-ness, such as leadership, culture, organizational structure, people, technology, competition, market segmentation, roles and responsibilities, process and information systems, performance measures, etc., and these factors are interrelated. People have to be ready for moving to a more fluid structure. Any ideas on what are the core qualities or competencies determine if one is ready for fluid structure.

Organization of the Future is an organization designed openly for anyone with ideas on how human organizations ought to be contrived in the face of the strategic imperatives of the 21st century: Due to the hyper-connectivity nature of digital organization, the digital workplace will be shaped by changes that take place in the way people relate to themselves and to their experience of their environment and others around them. A digital workplace inspires discovery, autonomy, and mastery. Digital management is responsible for enabling a collaborative, innovative, and productive working environment. So talented people can make a bigger influence regardless of their position, their voice can be amplified via social platforms, and their contribution can be recognized via holistic digital styles of talent/performance management. One of the key determinants of whether an organization can move to new digital structures is the development level of the people. At the organizational level, self-adaptation is faster if made with the full involvement of people in organizational change, starting from relations between people. So part of the digital journey is to prepare people for the new structures and to recognize increasing collective consciousness is a crucial step, in order to master the change and drive the seamless digital transformation.

The future of digital organizations is complex enough to act intelligently and nimble enough to adapt to the change promptly: The digital paradigm that is emerging is the digital organization that is organic, vibrant, energetic, fluid, innovative and holistic. Digitalorganizations are all about information savvy, adaptation, high-performance, and speed. It provides a more intensive and effective working environment enabling the organization to get all the right talented people in tackling challenges from all right angles all at once, for brainstorming and coming out the optimal solutions. Understanding the people and the organization through a common lens makes it possible to turn organizational “theories” into tangible management discipline that use “relations between people” as the loom on which to create management structures and processes that support self-adaptive problem-solving and build “recombinant” business capabilities. Innovative organizations also build institutional platforms that across digital ecosystem for evolving customers and business partners and building longer-term business relationships. Sustaining long-term collaboration allows participants to co-develop subject knowledge over time and focus more directly on business objectives to digital business strategy and digitally enabled innovation and transformation. Re-imaging the future of business is exciting, but investigating the different path for unleashing business potential needs to take a systematic approach and develop it into a more solid form.

Tuning the organizational design and structure to achieve the high level of autonomy is the symbol of the digital maturity. The democratic processes will overtake hierarchical control, and that culture will become a more fundamental organizational asset. Running a self-autonomous organization is to improve business efficiency, effectiveness, agility, and ultimately become a digital-ready high-performance business powerhouse.